Differences in the brain structure of ballet dancers found by scientists may be helping them circumvent feeling dizzy when they perform pirouettes. Many years of training, the research suggests, can permit dancers to suppress signals from the inner ear’s balance organs. These are interesting findings, because they could lead to improved treatment for patients with…
Category: Psychology
Treating Phobias in Your Sleep
By exposing people to a fear memory over and over again while they slept, scientists reduced fear during sleep. This is the first time that emotional memory has been manipulated in humans during sleep. “It’s a novel finding,” said Katherina Hauner, of Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine. “We showed a small but significant decrease…
Aggression In Boys May Begin Before Birth
Chronic aggressive behavior exhibited by some boys from disadvantaged families may be due to epigenetic changes during pregnancy and early childhood, suggests a study from McGill University. The research showed that men who displayed chronic aggressive behavior during childhood and adolescence have lower blood levels of four biomarkers of inflammation than in men who exhibited…
During Recessions, Do Prescriptions for Mental Illnesses Increase?
During economic recessions, overall public health improves. Sounds wrong, right? Well, think about it. Less work, less stress. Less people die, fewer heart attacks are reported and general morbidity decreases, according to research from the World Health Organization. On the other hand, a recent study from the University of Georgia shows that mental illness might…
5 Good Reasons to Keep a Journal
Keeping a journal is a great idea for everyone, regardless of age. There are many benefits to taking a few minutes each day to record your thoughts in a journal. The costs are minimal and the payback is huge. A journal is a great idea for you and your children. Many life coaches require that…
Vicariously Lowering Fears by Observing Other People
Fear of heights, snakes, open spaces, or you name it, phobias are widespread and can be hard to treat. A new study from Sweden indicates that watching someone else safely interact with the allegedly harmful object can help to quench these conditioned fear responses, and stop them resurfacing later on. The research suggests this type…
How Stress Can Lead To False Confessions
If you were wrongly accused of a crime, would you feel stressed out? Probably you would, but the innocent are often less stressed than the guilty, Iowa State University researchers found. That could leave you at more risk to admit to a crime you didn’t commit. To understand what leads to false confessions, researchers measured…
Auto-Activation Deficit Patients Dream When Minds Are Blank
Case studies of patients with Auto-Activation Deficit who reported dreams when awakened from REM sleep, even when they demonstrated a mental blank during the daytime, have been documented by Isabelle Arnulf and colleagues from the Sleep Disorders Unit at the Université Pierre et Marie Curie (UPMC). The paper proves that even patients with Auto-Activation Disorder…
Does Texting About Bad Behavior Predict Bad Behavior?
When teenagers send text messages it is mostly as harmless. But when the texting is antisocial, it can actually predict deviant behavior, according to a new study from the University of Texas at Dallas involving more than 76,000 text messages. “We were interested in how adolescents use electronic communication, particularly text messaging,” said Dr. Samuel…